I think you have misunderstood my point about the influence of the memetic apparatus on the promulgation of ideas. I'm not taking a particular stance on whether

I think you have misunderstood my point about the influence of the memetic apparatus on the promulgation of ideas. I'm not taking a particular stance on whether or not the Thinker himself would say X; I'm saying X is the version of the idea that is widely ascribed to the thinker because of memetic selection, and X is usually a version of what the thinker actually thinks. To say that X is a "strawman" implies some degree of disingenuousness, some intentionality, as if you could only possibly believe that Robin Hanson thinks people don't really care about their children if you are actively trying to misrepresent his real stance, which you secretly know deep down. In reality, Robin Hanson actually does think that people don't care about their children nearly as much as they say they do, add six more pages of caveats. This gets rhetorically rounded off to "Robin Hanson thinks people don't care about their children." The result is endless stupid conversations. This may or not be partly Robin Hanson's fault for making his blog post titles intentionally inflammatory and attention-grabby ("Healthcare is not about health", etc.). I am agnostic was to whether Foucalt has intentionally turned into the skid on this; but I do personally suspect that many big thinkers lean into obscurantism because they don't want to be nailed down. Another way of phrasing the above: What you just posted is actually my point. On reflection, I'm not actually sure whether you read beyond the second paragraph.